We Are Smiling And Talking But I Am Sinking

The last time I saw L she looked old. Scrambling across the library quad with a heaping stack of books and folders in her arms, constantly shifting and readjusting herself under their weight, with milky blue eyes around which her face had gracefully crumpled... she was all smiles.

18 years earlier, she had asked me why I never spoke up in class when I clearly looked engaged and thoughtful. I had assured her I was neither. We became friends.

I remember sitting in her office a year or two later watching an old girlfriend's new boyfriend walk by the window while I argued that the pen she was holding might not exist.

And here we were. And she looked old.

I was full of memories and nostalgia and had a hundred little details buzzing in my head. But she only remembered me vaguely, and left me with a faint sadness as she fluttered away into the night.